Navid Khonsari working on new game surrounding the events of Iran in 1979

Navid Khonsari has been the cinematic director for games such as Alan Wake, Homefront, GTA: Vice City and San Andreas, is planning on releasing a game that explorers the events of 1979 in Iran. For those who don’t know, 1979 saw the Shah of Iran being overthrown in favour of an Islamic republic formed on the 1st of April the same year. Khonsari, being an iranian, is well acquainted with the events in his home nation and plans to tell its story through a game labeled simply as ‘1979’

Although Khonsari no longer works for Rockstar, the game is likely to be influenced by it in many ways. 1979 will be an open world sandbox that will tell the tale of the Iranian revolution while having the player play as several different characters. The game will have players make choices that fall in a grey area similar to The Witcher 2 where making decisions will not neccesarily have a good or a bad outcome.

Maybe, in order to get the group there, you need to sacrifice some stragglers and let them get captured so the others can get away. And then you’ll have some extreme choices to make when you get to Tehran: Are you going to invade the embassy, guns blazing, to try to get the hostages back? Or are you going to try to protect the embassy from the Americans?

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I’m interested in having good and evil within the same character, and for you to experience both. I think that’s true to life, and I think you can design a game around that, too.

1979 definitely seems like a very intriguing game and probably the first of its kind in many ways. Games like these just go to show how far the gaming industry has evolved from simply being a means of entertainment to being a mode of communicating thoughts and ideas in a engaging and interactive manner. Between the rich historical background, GTA influenced elements and the ambigous and double sided nature of the game, 1979 should be a recipe for success as long as its executed well. This is just one of those games that can really pushthe boundaries a bit further similar to what Ubisoft did with the first Assasin’s Creed game.